Katara Interrupts
by Quill and Saber
Summary: A Zutara drabble set, though not all are sappy or romantic. Please read my beginning author's note!
1. Do Not Disturb

**Katara Doesn't Like Being Woken Up: A Drabblelike Zutara Duo**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. If I did, you may be assured Zuko would be less dense (heck, he has nowhere to go but up) and people would LISTEN to Iroh instead of dismissing it all as the ramblings of an old, more-than-slightly-eccentric man. But I don't own Avatar, so Zuko is still stupid and Iroh still ignored. Alas. _

_Note: The term "drabble" is_ severely_ misused. A drabble, by definition, is a very short story of _exactly_ one hundred words. No more, no less. _One hundred_. There are variations resting on the following hundreds (drubble, tribble, quabble, quibble, in that order) up to five hundred. Anything that doesn't fall on those isn't a drabble or one of the other types. Anything over 500 words is a ficlet. This series will be made of stories of the first five types. I won't post individually (I'll wait until I have two or three that make sense together) and I don't have a continuous story line as of yet for the collection. They're just what come to my mind, if anything comes at all._

* * *

**Melons, Also Entitled Things Zuko Would Never Do: A Quibble**

_A quibble is exactly five hundred words. This word count was done with MS Word._

_Challenge: See if you can come up with what Number One is. I'm starting small with my challenges, so it's not that difficult._

"Here you are, Zuko!" Azula was ecstatic. She'd been searching for her long-lost brother for the last five years (she was on the run now, though she preferred to call it "traveling") and she finally found him in a tiny Earth-Kingdom village on a farm. The thought of her brother farming was just weird. In fact, farming had been Thing Zuko Would Never Do Number Three, which is what made it so odd to her. Not that she had ever considered it a possibility. But here they were, standing in what appeared to be a backyard garden.

"Would you mind getting off my melons?" he asked calmly as he leaned against the earthen wall of the house, which infuriated Azula even more. He _cared_ about plants! Impossible. But there couldn't be _that_ many males of around his age with scars like that; it had to be her brother.

Azula recovered quickly. Stepping out onto the path (squashing a few melon seedlings in the process) she smirked tauntingly. "So you're grubbing around in the dirt now, are you? Must be nice to meet your equals."

The old Zuko would have shot a fistful of fire at her. This new Zuko merely shrugged. "I'm not good at it, really. I wouldn't call the other farmers my _equals_."

Azula nearly fell over in shock. Zuko, her brother, the crazy, prideful prince, had just admitted he wasn't the _best_? That was Thing Zuko Would Never Do Number Two. Something was just plain _wrong_ with her brother, and whatever it was, it made her angry.

Needless to say, Azula exploded. "What _are_ you? Are you a Son of Fire or not? Forget I asked, you're nothing but a worm, and that's an insult to worms!"

If this had continued, something very nasty and destructive might have happened to the poor melons. However, the Melon Spirit was in that particular area and decided to have pity on her poor children to save them from angry princesses. Thinking quickly, she did the only thing she could come up with to distract them.

The sound of the gentle moans of someone getting up and stretching came from within the house. Azula froze, getting a very, _very_ bad feeling—one of those types of feelings where you know something you fervently wish you didn't and _know_ you're going to get confirmation. Unfortunately for Azula, her gut feelings were almost always right. However, her gut feelings weren't always _quite_ on target. In fact, had she considered the truth, she'd probably be doubled over in pain at the thought.

"Zuko? Can you and your guest please keep it down; I'm trying to take a nap." The woman was rubbing her eyes as she stepped right outside the door. Azula stared to take in the sight. Mahogany skin. Brown hair. Blue necklace. And… Agni, no…

"I'm out of here, Zuzu. You just scare me." Azula turned around and hightailed it out of the village.

She was too _young_ to be an aunt.

* * *

**Fire Lord: A Drubble**

_A drubble is exactly two hundred words. Count was done in MS Word._

"Uncle, I won't do it, and that's final!"

"I'm old, Zuko. I don't have the strength left to lead a country," the old general protested from his seat on the bench.

"But you were _supposed_ to lead the country. And in case you haven't forgotten, I received only two years of instruction on how to rule, and most of it was military. I don't know a thing about economics or foreign policy or any of those things a ruler needs to know." Zuko paced the long patch of garden that was once his mother's haven.

"You are young. You can learn."

"I don't have time to learn, Uncle! The Nation needs a ruler _now _and I can't and won't do it. That leaves you."

"What are you arguing about?" Katara rounded the corner.

"Zuko thinks-"

"Uncle says-"

"Okay, quiet!" she interrupted.

"Iroh," she pointed to him. "You get to be Fire Lord. No ifs, ands, or buts. Zuko's seventeen and no one over twenty will listen to him."

"Zuko," she pointed again. "You'd best start studying. Learn how to do the job."

"And both of you," she said as she retreated, "don't argue when I'm trying to take a nap."

* * *

_Constructive criticism is _always_ welcome. I'm here to improve my writing, not my ego!_


	2. Family Time

**Katara Interrupts Part 2**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. If I did, you may be assured Zuko would be less dense (heck, he has nowhere to go but up) and people would LISTEN to Iroh instead of dismissing it all as the ramblings of an old, more-than-slightly-eccentric man. But I don't own Avatar, so Zuko is still stupid and Iroh still ignored. Alas. _

_Note: I especially like this first one about bedtime with daddy dearest. In my family, it was my father's job to take care of tuck-ins. However, instead of stories I'd get mental two-two-equations-two-unknowns algebra problems (imagine my joy when I graduated to linear programming when I was eight) and pitch recognition (one in two in my paternal grandfather's family has perfect pitch—considerably higher than the international average of one in ten thousand). But such are the activities of family life of future mathematicians and musicians._

**If I Remember Correctly…A Tribble**

"…and that's how the Fire Prince rescued his beloved," he finished. The young princess sighed with happiness as her father extinguished all the candles (except for one; the four-year-old didn't like the dark) and left the room. The Lord smiled contentedly as he carefully closed the nursery door; life was good.

"Funny," his wife said as she came out from behind a shadowy column in the hallway, startling him, "I didn't remember the rampaging badgermoles."

"That was for dramatic effect," he retorted, affronted.

"Uh huh. And what about the pirates?"

"Well, I did save you from them."

"If I recall correctly, I was saved by a lemur that was saving me from _you_."

"Well, you don't know what the pirates would have done if I hadn't stopped them."

She conceded. "I'll give you that one. But since when does my brother spit poison and eat small children?"

"Ever since he punched me in my good eye for coming within ten feet of you. I could barely see for three days!"

"That hardly warrants the post of Resident Evil-Bedtime-Story Monster, though. He's harmless, really."

"Hah. You weren't there when he found out he was going to be an uncle. I'm surprised I'm still alive after that." He winced at the memory.

She snorted. "Hypocrite. Suki wrote today; she's expecting their third. But don't change the subject. I don't remember you there either when that crazed general tried to bury me in stone to provoke the Avatar state, and what about the time at the Oasis at the North Pole—"

She was cut off shortly. "Don't you know?" he whispered. "The point is that the Fire Prince finally found his Princess. That's the point to all bedtime stories."

She smiled. "And that has a grain of truth in it after all."

**The Moon…A Quabble**

"Papa, Teacher said today that the Moon is bad."

Dinner came screeching to a halt. Mother and Father looked at each other, Mother with a warning look and Father with an expression I'd only seen him wear occasionally after particularly infuriating meetings. Great-Uncle looked for cover.

"Did he say why?" Father finally managed to say, a funny sound in his voice confusing me.

I cleared my throat, just like Teacher always did. "It's because the Moon and the Sun are always fighting, so it must be bad. And then the Moon is also weak because she doesn't shine all the time and—"

"Teacher is wrong." Mother's voice cut through my speech like a knife. "The Moon and the Sun don't fight at all. I can show you." She left her place at the table to walk to the window, beckoning me to follow. Once I got there, she picked me up and put me on the windowsill.

"See? How can they fight if they are in the sky at the same time?" She pointed to the twilight sky.

"But Teacher said—"

Mother shook her head emphatically. "Don't listen to her. I _met_ the Moon, and we were good friends. The Moon actually gave up her life to protect the balance of the world."

"You met the moon?" I was awed.

Mother nodded. "I did. I think we're distant cousins on my mother's-mother's side," she added absently.

"Did Father meet the Moon too?"

"He met her once," was the vague reply. Later, after questioning Great-Uncle I found out that Mother "forgot to tell me" that Father only met the Moon when he was at the North Pole trying to capture the Avatar. I wouldn't understand _why_ Father would want to hurt Uncle Aang until years later, and being six at the time, I let it pass.

"What was she like?"

"She was a princess of the Northern Water Tribe. Her name was Yue. And I don't believe for a minute that she had a speck of evil intent in her, and I don't believe that she'd suddenly become evil after ascending to the sky."

I absorbed this information. "So Teacher is wrong?"

"Yes, she is," Mother said with the conviction she only used when I finally grasped a concept.

"Mama?"

"Yes?"

"How did you meet the moon?"

"Well, that's a rather long story. It started when I was fourteen…"

**Bending**

_This one is pretty pathetic, but I wrote it in a rush before Zutara dies forevermore._

_This is based on the idea that the elements are made of two parts—temperature and dampness—and that receiving a temperature and a dampness gene would create a bender. For instance, receiving a cool gene and a dry gene would result in an Earthbender, cool and wet Water, hot and wet Air, and hot and dry Fire. But if both parents are benders and they have opposing genes (coughZUTARAcough)…well, that's my premise._

"Well…"

"I guess that proves your crazy theory right, Aang."

"Katara's not going to be happy."

"I know."

"Zuko?"

"Yes?"

"When he's old enough—"

"No."

"It's only common—"

"No, no, _no_."

"What on earth are you two arguing about?"

"Um…nothing, Katara. We're just debating the relative merits—"

"As in there are absolutely none."

"Dear, even for you that's close-minded. What's the fuss?"

"It's about Lu Ten." Zuko pointed.

"Lu Ten, what are you—"

Katara was, for once, speechless. But how surprising would it be if you suddenly saw your son sneeze and fly ten feet?


End file.
